It’s almost as if Pitt AD Heather Lyke tried to take the first year a little slow, publicly. Feel things out. Line up some things. And now… just unleash a firestorm of change.

Obviously there are the numerous coaching changes that have occurred. Hey, an accolade for wrestling.

Today she had a meeting with reporters and there were some really good things.

First of all, the Pete.

She announced that the Athletic Department will be changing the layout of the court at a media roundtable discussion at the Pete Wednesday morning.

According to Lyke, when Pitt built the events center, it “essentially built it backward” — meaning that the TV cameras on the court — currently located on the same side as the Oakland Zoo — show players, coaches and other sports personnel on the benches rather than the students in the fan section. Her plan is to move the benches in front of the Zoo and the cameras to the opposite side of the court at the end of the 2018-2019 season. This way, the cameras can focus on both the Zoo and people on the benches.

“When you see our games on national television, I don’t think it showcases our students at Pitt in the Oakland zoo as well as it could,” Lyke said. “It’s critical for the game day environment, the experience of our students at Pitt.”

Well, yeah. This has always been a no-brainer. One that has become more pronounced an issue in recent years as the attendance slipped. If you feel like making it all jargon-y, it is a vital tool to promote Pitt’s basketball brand. It’s a point of pride for the students and fans how good the Oakland Zoo is, and it has been ridiculous that nothing was done to put them more prominently in sight.

While Scott Barnes dismissed the idea as too expensive and not feasible, Lyke has worked to put a plan together (and make sure the money is there) to do it.

She also briefly mentioned that with the reconfiguration, her team will also “re-seat” the arena at the end of the season, meaning all current ticket holders will need to pick new seats. She also spoke about plans to renovate the court’s hardwood floors — suggesting there could be colorful new designs put on it.

I think we all know that the proper colors are going to be permanent real soon.

Chris Peak at PantherLair.com has the transcript on what she said about the flip.

What I mean by that is, obviously the ACC Network is coming and that’s a super exciting thing, but we’re on national television now anyway and when you see our games on national television, I don’t think it showcases our students at Pitt in the Oakland Zoo as well as it could.

I mean, the Oakland Zoo is one of our best assets that we have at Pitt. We have students who come out and are organized and committed and loyal and – winter, hills, darkness, whatever it is, they get to the games and they want to come to the Pete. So the Oakland Zoo is critical to our success and that gameday experience. When they built the Pete, they essentially built it backwards, as you all probably realize. So the cameras shoot at the benches, which are in front of the suites. So at the end of this season, we will redo the floor – we’ll have some fun with that; you all can weigh in on what it might look like – and we will flip the benches to the opposite side of the court and the cameras will be, obviously, on the opposite side of the arena.

So the camera angle will shoot toward the benches, which will be sitting in front of the Zoo then. We will obviously have all of our courtside seats, two rows of our courtside seats all the way around, and they will sit in front of the suites, then, the floor suites, as opposed to the team being in front of the floor suites. We wanted you to know that. We want people to understand why. I think it’s critical for the gameday environment, the experience of our students at Pitt. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met since I’ve been here that have said, ‘You know, I was a student in the Zoo’ or ‘My dad took me to games when I was…and I saw what the Zoo was all about and I wanted to come to Pitt to be in the Zoo.’ And that’s – you know, you can’t capture that. There’s not a pricetag you can put on that. So that experience for students to be engaged with the gameday experience is really important.

…

So you’re going to have the Oakland Zoo breathing down the necks of the opposing bench?
Lyke: Yeah.

And hecklers and whatever?
Lyke: Again, we’ll have to manage that. I think one of the things that’s great about the Oakland Zoo is, they are very organized. They meet regularly. We have staff that meet with them regularly. And it’s about being a good sportsmanship. I want people who come here to know that it’s a tough place to play because it’s loud and it’s exciting, but we want to cheer for our team more than criticize or overly heckle the opponents.

Is there anything? Anything in there to disagree? A win for common sense.

But! That’s not all. Fitzgerald Fieldhouse is going to change. Well, let’s be honest. Be replaced.

We have 16 other teams that work out and train every day up on the hill in the Fitzgerald Field House. That’s 84% of our student-athletes live and learn and train in that facility. It’s a 1951 facility that needs significant change.

If you are old like me, you may have some fond memories of basketball games at the Fitz. And romanticizing the giant cables and lines running out the building to TV trucks for national games televised there. But let’s be honest. The Fitz is old and not that great.

Or Trees Hall? Do they still have the racquetball courts you have to climb down on a ladder, then raise the ladder, and if you knock the ball out over the top, hope someone walks by and can toss it back down? Have they ever cleaned out the shooting range in the basement? My pistol and rifle class way back in 1990, ended 2 weeks early because the sand had become so filled with spent bullets that there was a ricochet risk. Though I still have a “Pitt Recreation” t-shirt from Trees that I forgot to return at some point.

So we worked closely with the University and said, ‘Can you give us a footprint of land and let’s see what we can fit in this footprint of land to really enhance our athletic facilities.’ We came up with this plan and we are very laser-focused at this point in time, since we got some of the work done that we need to with the people, now we need to focus on the facilities. So our facility master plan and vision is called ‘Victory Heights.’ You all know what victory lights are, right? So ‘Victory Heights’ is a term that our team came up with because it’s about putting our student-athletes in a position for success and I think there are some really neat student components that we can build in.

But ‘Victory Heights’ is about rethinking about the space really where the Field House is, where Trees Hall is, where the OC Lot is and what can you actually put in that space? 84% of our student-athletes work out every day in a strength and conditioning room that is not air-conditioned. Probably not the best situation, and yet we get unbelievable recruits and we won an ACC championship in volleyball. You can’t use it as an excuse and we get talented kids here, but I just think how much better of an experience, how much better a position we can put them in for success if we had some of these facilities.

So we’re looking at a center for human performance, which would be a new, state of the art strength and conditioning area, a sports medicine area, some level of human performance research, some collaboration with campus, coaches’ offices and then a new 3,000-seat arena for volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics. Then a new indoor track as well; on the backside of the human performance center, we would be having attached a new indoor 300-meter track where you could host events and it would connect to the Cost Center, and there are ways – we did some really nice renovations to the Cost Center. They did put new lights, new turf, new padding throughout that building. But exteriorally, it just doesn’t look that great. This would give us the ability to connect to it and really just diversify our indoor space and our indoor training space for some of our teams that need that.

‘Victory Heights,’ the goals are really to transform the student-athlete experience here at Pitt, to show a demonstrated commitment to comprehensive excellence from a facilities standpoint.

I’m kind of excited about this.

At the same time, I do worry about the money that this entails. In that area, Lyke kept it damn vague. Whether that is to work the donors and make sure the funds help flow that way. Or because the financing itself is not where it needs to be.

Yes, the ACC TV money is big. But it isn’t that big. And there are plenty of schools that have spent themselves into huge deficits with either the expectations of the funds showing up, or simply not being smart about it. Pitt has a long history of a frugal athletic department, so I am cautiously optimistic that there is a plan in place to make sure the funding happens.

And finally, because it always is a topic when it comes to talking with the Pitt Athletic Director. The status of Pitt-Penn State football.

Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke said Wednesday she has proposed to Penn State a four-year agreement to resume the schools’ football series in 2026, but she has not received a response from Penn State officials.

And she added Pitt does not plan to wait indefinitely.

“We’re going to wait a tad more patiently,” Lyke said, “but not much. We can’t.

“We have people who want to play us and good opportunities to play what would be a very attractive game.

“But I think out of the respect for Penn State and the opportunity within the Commonwealth, we want to play Penn State. If they don’t, we will obviously shift gears.”

I doubt the Nits will want to do another go-round for a while. As much as I want to see the game annually. As much fun as it can be. As good as it is for the Commonwealth. I just can’t get worked up over it any longer.

When Lyke was hired a little over a year ago, let’s just say reactions were mixed by fans and media. It’s fair to say that the mood has shifted a bit.

But all that said — man, Lyke’s session was more impressive and, in theory, more encouraging for Pitt fans than it had any right to be, wasn’t it? If giving updates like that is part of her job, covering them is part of ours. Speaking personally, I thought I was fine watching our Pitt reporters pass the info along, but midway through, I was wishing I was there myself.

Again: This is a late-April administrative base-touching. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but Lyke managed to make the endeavor feel like something approaching it. From the jump, she was playing the hits — all her remarks seemed designed to either exert control over some important narrative thread or foster genuine excitement in the fan base. She didn’t announce an on-campus football stadium, or that Hemingway’s happy hour menu pricing would apply around the clock, but she came close enough.

There’s still a lot more of the heavy lifting to do with the plans announced. And as I may have mentioned already, there’s a lot of money in play. But the moves Lyke has made. In terms of hirings (and firings), planning for Pitt’s athletic future and a willingness to talk to people rather then at them. Well, it has made a huge difference for fans of Pitt going forward.